Dear Pirates,

The Flying Dutchman (Dutch: De Vliegende Hollander) was a legendary ghost ship that could never make port and was doomed to sail the oceans forever. The myth is likely to have originated from the 17th-century golden age of the Dutch East India Company (VOC).

If hailed by another ship, the crew of the Flying Dutchman will try to send messages to land, or to people long dead. In ocean lore, the sight of this phantom ship is a portent of doom.

Background:

The common story is that this Dutchman came to the Cape in distress of weather and wanted to get into harbour but could not get a pilot to conduct her and was lost and that ever since in very bad weather her vision appears

View of Table Bay (overlooked by Kaapstad, Dutch Cape Colony) with ships of the Dutch East India Company, c. 1683. In the 1600s the size of the Dutch merchant fleet probably exceeded the combined fleets of England, France, Spain, Portugal, and Germany.

Sir Walter Scott (1771–1832), was the first to refer to the vessel as a pirate ship, writing that the ship was "originally a vessel loaded with great wealth, on board of which some horrid act of murder and piracy had been committed" and that the apparition of the ship "is considered by the mariners as the worst of all possible omens."

The Flying Dutchman (Pirates of the Caribbean)

We all know the ship as it was used in the Pirates of the Caribean.

To be continued....next Sunday I show you the Pirate booty full with silver!

Goldrooster

(source: Wikipedia) (I am a regular sponsor of Wikipedia)